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STATS HISTOHICVL SOCIETY
HITT & LOSS
COLUMBIA, SO. 65211
. :
o adQ. out subscilfceis we oet tde uaimesc o fio& otay gteetatgs
i
xfcm the entttc Uisgotitinn staj.
ffclfr Columbia P
76th Year No. 89 Good Morning! It's Sunday, December 25, 1983 5 Sections 48 Pages 50 Cents
. :
Memories of depression era Christmas
30' s economy
didn't damper
holiday spirits
By Leslie Werstein
Mlssourian stall writer
When Santa Claus came to Boone
County in 1933, he wore red, white
and blue.
He earned Christmas packages
of federal relief aid to raise the
spirits and fill the pockets of people
living in a depressed economy.
In 1933 when Christmas ap-proached,
there was some hope for
economic recovery. With help from
the federal government, the situa-tion
had begun to improve. The en-thusiastic
sense of community that '
Christmas brought was ttUKh 8 JL t is today. People smiled" and:
greeted each other as they strolled
ll Cy Days of
JJLChristmas
along Broadway examining win-dow
displays.
Though some of those people still
live here and many of the stores
still stand, during Christmas 1933,
Boone County was a different place
in a different time- Preside-nt
Franklin D. Roose-velt's
administrative elves at the
Civil Works Administration em-ployed
450 women and 460 men m
the county. The total weekly pay-roll
was $ 20,000.
Today, a weekly paycheck of $ 22
doesn't sound like much. Shelter
Insurance Cos. alone employs 1,000
people, and the average household
here has a buying income of $ 21,000
a year, or $ 438 a week.
Local farmers earned $ 12,000 a
year in federal payments through
the Agricultural Adjustment Ad- minstra- tion
m 1933. That stimu-lated
a desperately needed upturn
in farm prices
Oscar Johnson, a resident of
Boone County for more than 70
years, remembers how desperately
that upturn was needed.
" Hog prices were so cheap then
that you couldn't make enough
money to buy feed for them," he
says. But a smile returns to the
face of the man who calls himself a
kid in his 70' s as he reminisces
about how cheap everything else
was then.
" I used to buy five gallons of gas
for 75 cents, and that would run me
most of the week," he recalls. " A
pair of overalls at J. C. Penney,
when it was over here on Broad-way,
cost me $ 1.98 a pair. Today
they cost in the $ 18 range."
That's an 809 percent increase.
And, believe it or not, Johnson's
getting a good deal. Relatively
speaking, his overalls are less ex-pensive
now than they were fifty
years ago.
The Consumer Price Index in
1933 was 38.8; in 1983 it is 300.3.
That means the average cast of a
basket of goods is about 10 times
higher now than in 1933. If the cost
of Johnson's overalls had in-creased
at the same rate as the
CPI, they would cost about $ 19X0.
But other goods, especially those
that make nice Christmas gifts,
have increased at a faster rate.
For example, a sterling silver mon-ey
cap advertised for $ 1 now costs
40 tune3 that much. And a simple
Oscar Johnson at home just north of Englewood, Mo. J, m "'
undecorated Steuben Glass fruit
bowl advertised for $ 4.50 now sells
for a least $ 500 an increase of
about 11,000 percent And the gift
that few students can live without
the dependable corn popper
advertised then for 69 cents, now
costs about 1,700 tunes that much.
The National Recovery Adminis-tration
offered a solution to low
prices and lower wages.
Hit. Mueller, founder of Muel-ler's
EJonst, which closed in 1981,
was the president of the Chamber
of Commerce and headed the local
NRA organization. Boone County
employers supported the efforts of
the organization by raising wages,
limiting the work week to 48 in-stead
of 80 hours, eliminating child
labor and avoiding excessive profi-teering.
As a result, prices went up and
people had to pay. For example,
the University PanheUenic organi-zation,
which gave all sorontj
cleaning to one local business, had
to pay 60 percent more because of
the NRA code of fair competition in
the cleaning and dying industry.
That code eventually was de-clared
unconstitutional. As city,
Planning and Development Direc-tor
Pat Daugherty puts it: " The
blue eagle didn't fly." The blue ea-gle
was the NRA symbol, and for a
while, all businesses that support-ed
the effort displayed its wings on
their windows
Boone County residents were en-couraged
to buy only those prod-ucts
and shop only in those shops
that displayed the eagle's wings.
And they did. That was the type of
spirit the New Deal inspired.
" There was a new hope and spirit
in Columbia," says local historian
John Crighton. " The town and coun-try
had voted for a New DeaL There
was a tremendous wave of activity,
hope and planning. A new vitality.
Particularly at Christmas."
Despite the new vitality and
overwhelming Christmas spirit,
behind the mirage of flying re-- .
indeer and under the stacks of
packages tied with flowing ribbons
was reality The depression was
far from over. Its end, at least five
more years away.
Reality meant depressed prices
and nearly 25 percent employment
It meant an additional 15 percent in
cuts of teacher's salaries at the
University. It meant reading arti-cles
in the newspaper about the
lynching of a black man by a for-mer
St. Joseph policeman
It also meant an overcrowded
county jail. And the solution was
too expensive for Boone Counhans,
so they defeated a $ 40,000 bond is-sue
by 67 votes.
Some things haven't changed
that much, This year Boone Coun- tfp- ns
' defeated by 1,581 votes a
sales tax that would have garnered
$ 2it million to improve and expand
the county jail and courthouse.
Of ' course, the county popula-tion
then was 31,000 compared to
100,000 now. Also, the number of
See SEASON, Page 9A
Oraflex maker
urges doctors
not to use drug
INDIANAPOLIS ( UPI) Physi-cians
still administering Oraflex to
patients are being urged by Eh Lilly
and Co. to stop using the drag since
lab tests indicated an increase of liv-er
cancer in mice treated with large
doses of the drug.
The arthritis medicine has been
withdrawn from the market, but 53
physicians have been using it under
special arrangements to treat 1,200
persons.
A Lolly spokesman said company
officials began telephoning doctors
on Thursday and by Friday all but
about 50 had been reached. Mail- -
grams urging doctors to discontinue
the drug were sent as a follow- u- p to
the calls.
But Ronald Culp, a Lilly
spokesman, said there is no direct
link between the findings in mice
and long- ter- m effects on human be-ings.
Power plants feeling
bite of sub- zer- o cold;
warming trend seen
By Tammy Rosier
Missounan staff writer
The arcuc blast sweeping across
the Show- M- e State is creating prob-lems
for more than just area resi-dents
The record- lo- w temperatures
are vexing Columbia's city power
plant, too
The problem is not with peak en-ergy
use, but rather with getting the
coal from the plant's 200- to- n storage
sdos into the boilers, says Roger
Sublett, plant dayshift supervisor
The water m the coal, which comes
from factors as diverse as ram and
purification, is causing the coal to
freeze into solid chunks prohibiting
the flow of coal into the boilers An
employee has to attend the silos
around the clock in order to break
apart any chunks,
" It's nothing that would shut us
down," Sublett says, ' but it is caus-ing
a problem "
The worst effect the clogging
might have on the plant would be to
force it to cut back service, but right
now plant officials do not see that as
a serious threat If necessary they
are prepared to put another employ-ee
on chunk- breakin- g duty
The chunkbreakers attend to two
silos feeding one of the plant's two
coal- burni- ng units Despite the high
use of energy during this season, the
power plant is working below its
, peak capacity because so many
homes are still heated by gas, says
Gary Anderson, plant superinten-dent
The frozen coal problem is nothing
new to power plants, it happens ev-ery
year when temperatures dip be-low
the zero mark Forecasters,
however, are predicting slightly
wanner weather in the area for
Christmas Day with a high around 12
cause degrees above with a 30 per-cent
chance of snow The low Sunday
evening is predicted be 5 above and
the high Monday is expected to hit
tnemid- 20- s
It would be a relief
Columbia set yet another record
low Saturday morning with a tem-perature
of 14 degrees below zero
The new record, which edged last
Thursday's record of 12 below,
marked the seventh straight day of
sub- zer- o lows
Winds Saturday created wind chill
factors of up to 70 below in parts of
Missouri and the national Weather
Service officials warned residents to
take precations before braving the
bitterly cold weather
Northerly winds of 20 to 30 m p h
with gusts over 40 m p h. caused
blowing and drifting snow in much of
the state Saturday, with blowing
snow expected to cause very low vis-ibility
at tunes and dangerous driv-ing
Wind chill Kansas City Interna-tional
dropped to 70 below zero at 8
a m , when St Louis recorded a 64
below wind chill factor
The severe wind chill factors the
state is experiencing now can cause
frostbite on bare skin very quickly,
says Gordon Rogers, a nurse at tne
University hospital emergency
room Extremeues such as fingers,
toes, noses and ears, are most su- ceph- ble
to frostbite The best way to
guard against frostbite if one ab-solutely
needs to be outside in this
weather is to keep the entire body
warm, which enables more circula-tion
to the extremities, and keep as
little skin as possible exposed, Rog-ers
says
Globe employees remain
uncertain about future
By Linda C Pulg
Mlssourian staff writer
Time has moved a little faster for
employees of the St Louis Globe- Democ- rat
" Pearl Harbor Day came a month
early this year," said Rich Kurre,
police reporter for the Globe
Kurre was referring to the Nov 7
announcement by publisher G Dun-can
Bauman that the financially- ailin- g
paper would discontinue publica-tion
New Year's Eve unless a buyer
could be found
Understandably, the employees
were disappointed
The team spirit on which they all
prided themselves would be dis-banded
and friends would go their
separate ways
Members of the Newspaper Guild,
the union representing about 200 of
the Globe's editorial staff, signed
termination and severance agree-ments
and many employees began
searching for other jobs They were
discouraged, but they were getting
on with hie.
Shortly after Thanksgiving, how-ever,
their disappointment turned to
confusion and uncertainty.
It appeared that the Herald Co ,
owner of the Globe, was seriously
considering an offer from Jeffrey M.
Gluck, a 30- year-- old Columbia pub-lisher
who had already purchased
and revived three magazines, in-cluding
the Saturday Review.
Who is this Jeffrey M. Gluck, they
all asked They wondered why he
wanted to buy the Globe, how he
would buy it, and what plans he had
in store for the paper. More impor-tantly,
they wondered how it would
affect them personally.
aC3DKJU
Many of those who had not already
taken jobs elsewhere discontinued
their hunts Others kept looking,
waiting to see what happened with
the sale negotiations Others, whde
job- hunu- ng, discovered that their
prospective employers were just as
unwilling to commit to offers until
the outcome of the negotiations was
known.
Last week, as negotiations drew to
a close, the Globe employees' con-cerns
became even stronger The
media began to report that Gluck
wanted to renegotiate contracts,
seeking possible concessions from
guild members. He was also think-ing
of cutting staff size, the reports
said. The Globe employees hoped
Friday's scheduled announcement
would resolve their uncertain situa-tions.
However, the announcement that a
sale agreement had been signed F n- d- ay
morning by Gluck and the
Herald Co only brought ambivalent
feelings, as it appears that the sale
agreement is contingent upon suc-cessful
negotiations with the Guild.
" On one hand, I'm very happy that
the paper is alive," said Art Thonv
ason, editor of the Illinois section.
" On the other hand, you know, I'm
apprehensive. I'm looking out for
my future and my family's future
and I just don't know what to make
of it."
Burgess said he thought most em-ployees
wanted to stay and might
take some pay modifications over
the short haul to get the caper back
Sm POST, Pag 12A

STATS HISTOHICVL SOCIETY
HITT & LOSS
COLUMBIA, SO. 65211
. :
o adQ. out subscilfceis we oet tde uaimesc o fio& otay gteetatgs
i
xfcm the entttc Uisgotitinn staj.
ffclfr Columbia P
76th Year No. 89 Good Morning! It's Sunday, December 25, 1983 5 Sections 48 Pages 50 Cents
. :
Memories of depression era Christmas
30' s economy
didn't damper
holiday spirits
By Leslie Werstein
Mlssourian stall writer
When Santa Claus came to Boone
County in 1933, he wore red, white
and blue.
He earned Christmas packages
of federal relief aid to raise the
spirits and fill the pockets of people
living in a depressed economy.
In 1933 when Christmas ap-proached,
there was some hope for
economic recovery. With help from
the federal government, the situa-tion
had begun to improve. The en-thusiastic
sense of community that '
Christmas brought was ttUKh 8 JL t is today. People smiled" and:
greeted each other as they strolled
ll Cy Days of
JJLChristmas
along Broadway examining win-dow
displays.
Though some of those people still
live here and many of the stores
still stand, during Christmas 1933,
Boone County was a different place
in a different time- Preside-nt
Franklin D. Roose-velt's
administrative elves at the
Civil Works Administration em-ployed
450 women and 460 men m
the county. The total weekly pay-roll
was $ 20,000.
Today, a weekly paycheck of $ 22
doesn't sound like much. Shelter
Insurance Cos. alone employs 1,000
people, and the average household
here has a buying income of $ 21,000
a year, or $ 438 a week.
Local farmers earned $ 12,000 a
year in federal payments through
the Agricultural Adjustment Ad- minstra- tion
m 1933. That stimu-lated
a desperately needed upturn
in farm prices
Oscar Johnson, a resident of
Boone County for more than 70
years, remembers how desperately
that upturn was needed.
" Hog prices were so cheap then
that you couldn't make enough
money to buy feed for them," he
says. But a smile returns to the
face of the man who calls himself a
kid in his 70' s as he reminisces
about how cheap everything else
was then.
" I used to buy five gallons of gas
for 75 cents, and that would run me
most of the week," he recalls. " A
pair of overalls at J. C. Penney,
when it was over here on Broad-way,
cost me $ 1.98 a pair. Today
they cost in the $ 18 range."
That's an 809 percent increase.
And, believe it or not, Johnson's
getting a good deal. Relatively
speaking, his overalls are less ex-pensive
now than they were fifty
years ago.
The Consumer Price Index in
1933 was 38.8; in 1983 it is 300.3.
That means the average cast of a
basket of goods is about 10 times
higher now than in 1933. If the cost
of Johnson's overalls had in-creased
at the same rate as the
CPI, they would cost about $ 19X0.
But other goods, especially those
that make nice Christmas gifts,
have increased at a faster rate.
For example, a sterling silver mon-ey
cap advertised for $ 1 now costs
40 tune3 that much. And a simple
Oscar Johnson at home just north of Englewood, Mo. J, m "'
undecorated Steuben Glass fruit
bowl advertised for $ 4.50 now sells
for a least $ 500 an increase of
about 11,000 percent And the gift
that few students can live without
the dependable corn popper
advertised then for 69 cents, now
costs about 1,700 tunes that much.
The National Recovery Adminis-tration
offered a solution to low
prices and lower wages.
Hit. Mueller, founder of Muel-ler's
EJonst, which closed in 1981,
was the president of the Chamber
of Commerce and headed the local
NRA organization. Boone County
employers supported the efforts of
the organization by raising wages,
limiting the work week to 48 in-stead
of 80 hours, eliminating child
labor and avoiding excessive profi-teering.
As a result, prices went up and
people had to pay. For example,
the University PanheUenic organi-zation,
which gave all sorontj
cleaning to one local business, had
to pay 60 percent more because of
the NRA code of fair competition in
the cleaning and dying industry.
That code eventually was de-clared
unconstitutional. As city,
Planning and Development Direc-tor
Pat Daugherty puts it: " The
blue eagle didn't fly." The blue ea-gle
was the NRA symbol, and for a
while, all businesses that support-ed
the effort displayed its wings on
their windows
Boone County residents were en-couraged
to buy only those prod-ucts
and shop only in those shops
that displayed the eagle's wings.
And they did. That was the type of
spirit the New Deal inspired.
" There was a new hope and spirit
in Columbia," says local historian
John Crighton. " The town and coun-try
had voted for a New DeaL There
was a tremendous wave of activity,
hope and planning. A new vitality.
Particularly at Christmas."
Despite the new vitality and
overwhelming Christmas spirit,
behind the mirage of flying re-- .
indeer and under the stacks of
packages tied with flowing ribbons
was reality The depression was
far from over. Its end, at least five
more years away.
Reality meant depressed prices
and nearly 25 percent employment
It meant an additional 15 percent in
cuts of teacher's salaries at the
University. It meant reading arti-cles
in the newspaper about the
lynching of a black man by a for-mer
St. Joseph policeman
It also meant an overcrowded
county jail. And the solution was
too expensive for Boone Counhans,
so they defeated a $ 40,000 bond is-sue
by 67 votes.
Some things haven't changed
that much, This year Boone Coun- tfp- ns
' defeated by 1,581 votes a
sales tax that would have garnered
$ 2it million to improve and expand
the county jail and courthouse.
Of ' course, the county popula-tion
then was 31,000 compared to
100,000 now. Also, the number of
See SEASON, Page 9A
Oraflex maker
urges doctors
not to use drug
INDIANAPOLIS ( UPI) Physi-cians
still administering Oraflex to
patients are being urged by Eh Lilly
and Co. to stop using the drag since
lab tests indicated an increase of liv-er
cancer in mice treated with large
doses of the drug.
The arthritis medicine has been
withdrawn from the market, but 53
physicians have been using it under
special arrangements to treat 1,200
persons.
A Lolly spokesman said company
officials began telephoning doctors
on Thursday and by Friday all but
about 50 had been reached. Mail- -
grams urging doctors to discontinue
the drug were sent as a follow- u- p to
the calls.
But Ronald Culp, a Lilly
spokesman, said there is no direct
link between the findings in mice
and long- ter- m effects on human be-ings.
Power plants feeling
bite of sub- zer- o cold;
warming trend seen
By Tammy Rosier
Missounan staff writer
The arcuc blast sweeping across
the Show- M- e State is creating prob-lems
for more than just area resi-dents
The record- lo- w temperatures
are vexing Columbia's city power
plant, too
The problem is not with peak en-ergy
use, but rather with getting the
coal from the plant's 200- to- n storage
sdos into the boilers, says Roger
Sublett, plant dayshift supervisor
The water m the coal, which comes
from factors as diverse as ram and
purification, is causing the coal to
freeze into solid chunks prohibiting
the flow of coal into the boilers An
employee has to attend the silos
around the clock in order to break
apart any chunks,
" It's nothing that would shut us
down," Sublett says, ' but it is caus-ing
a problem "
The worst effect the clogging
might have on the plant would be to
force it to cut back service, but right
now plant officials do not see that as
a serious threat If necessary they
are prepared to put another employ-ee
on chunk- breakin- g duty
The chunkbreakers attend to two
silos feeding one of the plant's two
coal- burni- ng units Despite the high
use of energy during this season, the
power plant is working below its
, peak capacity because so many
homes are still heated by gas, says
Gary Anderson, plant superinten-dent
The frozen coal problem is nothing
new to power plants, it happens ev-ery
year when temperatures dip be-low
the zero mark Forecasters,
however, are predicting slightly
wanner weather in the area for
Christmas Day with a high around 12
cause degrees above with a 30 per-cent
chance of snow The low Sunday
evening is predicted be 5 above and
the high Monday is expected to hit
tnemid- 20- s
It would be a relief
Columbia set yet another record
low Saturday morning with a tem-perature
of 14 degrees below zero
The new record, which edged last
Thursday's record of 12 below,
marked the seventh straight day of
sub- zer- o lows
Winds Saturday created wind chill
factors of up to 70 below in parts of
Missouri and the national Weather
Service officials warned residents to
take precations before braving the
bitterly cold weather
Northerly winds of 20 to 30 m p h
with gusts over 40 m p h. caused
blowing and drifting snow in much of
the state Saturday, with blowing
snow expected to cause very low vis-ibility
at tunes and dangerous driv-ing
Wind chill Kansas City Interna-tional
dropped to 70 below zero at 8
a m , when St Louis recorded a 64
below wind chill factor
The severe wind chill factors the
state is experiencing now can cause
frostbite on bare skin very quickly,
says Gordon Rogers, a nurse at tne
University hospital emergency
room Extremeues such as fingers,
toes, noses and ears, are most su- ceph- ble
to frostbite The best way to
guard against frostbite if one ab-solutely
needs to be outside in this
weather is to keep the entire body
warm, which enables more circula-tion
to the extremities, and keep as
little skin as possible exposed, Rog-ers
says
Globe employees remain
uncertain about future
By Linda C Pulg
Mlssourian staff writer
Time has moved a little faster for
employees of the St Louis Globe- Democ- rat
" Pearl Harbor Day came a month
early this year," said Rich Kurre,
police reporter for the Globe
Kurre was referring to the Nov 7
announcement by publisher G Dun-can
Bauman that the financially- ailin- g
paper would discontinue publica-tion
New Year's Eve unless a buyer
could be found
Understandably, the employees
were disappointed
The team spirit on which they all
prided themselves would be dis-banded
and friends would go their
separate ways
Members of the Newspaper Guild,
the union representing about 200 of
the Globe's editorial staff, signed
termination and severance agree-ments
and many employees began
searching for other jobs They were
discouraged, but they were getting
on with hie.
Shortly after Thanksgiving, how-ever,
their disappointment turned to
confusion and uncertainty.
It appeared that the Herald Co ,
owner of the Globe, was seriously
considering an offer from Jeffrey M.
Gluck, a 30- year-- old Columbia pub-lisher
who had already purchased
and revived three magazines, in-cluding
the Saturday Review.
Who is this Jeffrey M. Gluck, they
all asked They wondered why he
wanted to buy the Globe, how he
would buy it, and what plans he had
in store for the paper. More impor-tantly,
they wondered how it would
affect them personally.
aC3DKJU
Many of those who had not already
taken jobs elsewhere discontinued
their hunts Others kept looking,
waiting to see what happened with
the sale negotiations Others, whde
job- hunu- ng, discovered that their
prospective employers were just as
unwilling to commit to offers until
the outcome of the negotiations was
known.
Last week, as negotiations drew to
a close, the Globe employees' con-cerns
became even stronger The
media began to report that Gluck
wanted to renegotiate contracts,
seeking possible concessions from
guild members. He was also think-ing
of cutting staff size, the reports
said. The Globe employees hoped
Friday's scheduled announcement
would resolve their uncertain situa-tions.
However, the announcement that a
sale agreement had been signed F n- d- ay
morning by Gluck and the
Herald Co only brought ambivalent
feelings, as it appears that the sale
agreement is contingent upon suc-cessful
negotiations with the Guild.
" On one hand, I'm very happy that
the paper is alive," said Art Thonv
ason, editor of the Illinois section.
" On the other hand, you know, I'm
apprehensive. I'm looking out for
my future and my family's future
and I just don't know what to make
of it."
Burgess said he thought most em-ployees
wanted to stay and might
take some pay modifications over
the short haul to get the caper back
Sm POST, Pag 12A